The Congress and the BJP have been receiving huge amounts in funds from Anil Agrawal’s London-based Vedanta Group through its subsidiaries in India, raising questions from a civil society group over the alleged foreign funding of the politic
Justice has been done, the fast-track court’s verdict welcomed, and even Sushilkumar Shinde, the union home minister, said just as much without mouthing symptoms of his recurrent foot-in-mouth disease. So as the courtroom at t
Is social media responsible for aggravating communal tension in Muzaffarnagar, leading to killing of over 50 people? If you go by the opinion of the state government, the answer is an unambiguous ‘yes’. Though this was t
Beating bigwig merchant bankers like Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and SBI Capital Markets, Khaitan and co. has been appointed as legal adviser to manage the stake sale in Coal India limited (CIL). They will be managing disinve
All the four convicted in the December 16, 2012 gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student inside a private bus in Delhi have been sentenced to death by the Saket fast track trial court. Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sh
According to a statement released by the PMO, six central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) had surpassed their first quarter targets. They are NMDC, PGCIL, NLC, BEL, RINL and HAL. Besides, 23 CPSEs made capital investments of over
Hoping to calm the frayed nerves of foreign investors, markets watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has decided to relax registration norms and do away with exhaustive paperwork. This move, however, will be applicable only for lo
With the RSS-BJP leadership seeming determined to push BJP patriarch LK Advani to the margins, the grand old man of the Hindutva family today stands in splendid isolation. There are few takers for his argument that the declaration of Gujarat chief
The group of ministers (GoM), headed by finance minister P Chidambaram, on Thursday, decided to refund over Rs 11,000 crore to BSNL and MTNL, the two state-run players, for returning broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum. Telecom minist
Mumbai-based Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers has paid the government Rs 66.20 crore as dividend for the year 2012-13. RCF’s chairman and managing director R G Rajan handed over the dividend cheque to Srikant Kumar Jena, union min
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has constituted an expert committee to review and strengthen its monetary policy framework. The committee headed by RBI deputy governor Urjit Patel and comprising seven other members will submit its report in the ne
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to create a central repository of large borrowers (individuals and organisations) whose loans exceed Rs 10 crore. This new move comes barely a week after its new governor Raghuram Rajan had proposed the
A special initiative was launched by Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) during an apex strategic confluence on cost control and cost competitiveness. The initiative named COIS (Cost Optimization Initiatives of SAIL) outlines the road map for
With India’s policymakers regularly harping on taking the country on a high-growth trajectory, and with increased participation of the private sector while at the same time gradually folding up the public sector, there is a strong lesson fro
Sixty-five years after independence and after six decades of planned development, inadequate access to power remains a critical development challenge in Uttar Pradesh. Its per capita energy consumption is among the lowest in all states. In 2009-10
It has become easy for a section of coal consumers to avoid attracting penalty for payment defaults due to the absence of a single independent director on the board of Coal India (CIL). Besides West Bengal, which has defaulted on nearly Rs
A proposal to fix a two-year tenure for IAS officers serving in the states has been struck down by several states like Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Punjab while 13 states have accepted it and issued notifications. According to a report in t
The Department of personnel and training (DOPT) has asked government officials to be courteous and respectful towards the elected representative. It has instructed all states to ask serving bureaucrats to comply with the code of conduct in their d
Kanpur, the once bustling industrial city with a labour workforce of lakhs, is in a dilemma today. It cannot shed its image of a former major manufacturing hub in north-central India, and yet it is no better than a small town forced to become big
Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), a mini-ratna firm has raised funds from retail investors besides the tax-free bonds public issues recently, said chairman and managing director, V P Baligar. The company has raised Rs 1,40
